Car Show
Later in the morning, everything stopped as the Car Show judges made their grand entrance. First up was a white Pontiac Fiero with a Countach conversion that was so clean, most people believed it was a real Lamborghini. The Red Bull girls ran up thinking it was Kanye West, but it turned out to be none other than James Chen of Axis Wheels. Next was Dennis Holloway of Mothers car care products, driving a blazing orange 997 GT3 RS. Finally, Troy Sumitomo of Five Axis Models just sort of appeared out of thin air. These guys take their bling seriously.
From the get-go, each competitor was prepared for the objective performance testing of the USCC. However, some came up short in the onslaught of subjective tests they would face on day one. The Car Show judges were the first to pick out the weak and take them down.
Mike Kim's Ariel Atom had nowhere to hide. It stood out from the pack and the judges pounced on it. Sumitomo's notes simply read: "Couldn't judge fairly because it is so stock, but still unique and badass out of the box." This was followed by a total score of 10 out of 110. The other judges did their best, but Kim basically showed up in a near-stock ride. And it showed. The Atom's last-place finish was so low it seriously expanded the scale, allowing the rest of the competitors to gather big points.
The door was wide open, but no one really did that well. Chen dinged the STI for having trash in the rear seat, but the car still came away with the win. The BMW was detailed to a tee, but the age of the paint and interior held it back. Curiously, the vintage 2002 with its Axis OG wheels was the only car to receive full wheel points from Chen.
As you can see from the photos, the cars all looked sharp. They just weren't loaded down with monitors and Bondo, like any good show car should be. Besides, in the overall scheme of things, most would rather come up short on the show side than on the go side.
-Andy Hope
The big balla show car guys were just the beginning of the subjective tests. The next pair of tests evaluated the cars' practicality on the street. After all, this is not the Ultimate Race Car Challenge. This competition is for street cars-and street cars like to be driven normally.